Overview

Breakdown of Community Involvement contributions (2005 and 2004)

	2005		2004
	£000's	%	£000's	%
Cash support	2,279	86	1,848	83
Employee time	130	5	194	9
Gifts in kind	26	1	52	2
Management costs	215	8	197	6
Total CI contribution	2,650	100	2,291	100

We aim to contribute no less than 0.5% of the prior year's UK operating profit (on a Modified Statutory Solvency basis) to support our Community Involvement (CI) programme.

We support three main groups:

A small number of national charities — these are our Major Community Partnerships;
Charities and community activities local to our main offices;
Employees in their charitable giving and involvement.

We also operate a Young Excellence Scheme, through which we provide financial support to exceptionally talented young people.

As shown by the table above, our contributions consist mainly of financial support for charities and community groups, but also include employee time and gifts in kind. As in previous years, we have categorised our giving according to the format used by the Business in the Community PerCent Club.

We do not support *:

Animal charities;
Charities based overseas or international projects;
Religious organisations, except where it can be proven that the project to be undertaken will benefit the community as a whole;
Political organisations.

(* Apart from providing match-funding for employees who have raised money for such charities.)

	Management Costs (total incl locations)	8%
	Cash Spend (ex mgmt costs)	86%
	Staff Time	5%
	Gifts in Kind	1%